Plight of Rohingya refugees pushed Akayedullah for NY bombing?

December 20, 2017, 12:36 PM IST

New York: A Bangladeshi-origin man was arrested on Monday after a “low-tech” suicide bomb he was was allegedly wearing went off injuring him and three others at the city’s transportation hub at the start of the rush hour.

Police Commissioner James O’Neil told reporters that 27-year-old Akayed Ullah had on an “improvised low-tech explosive device attached to his body,” which he “intentionally detonated”.

Officials said that Ullah was from Bangladesh and had lived in the city for seven years.Ullah was taken to a hospital and has made statements to police, O’Neil said, but refused to disclose what he had said.

Rohingya plight

Before Akayed Ullah returned home to New York from his native Bangladesh, he spend all-night riding a bus by himself to help Rohingya refugees.

According to a NYT report, after visiting relatives in Dhaka, he traveled across the country, slept in a mosque and under a tree, and passed out a few hundred dollars of medicine in the crowded refugee camps.

“When he left, he seemed happy,” said his mother-in-law, Mahfuza Akhter. “But when he returned, he was so upset. He said those people were living in hell, each and every minute.”

That lonely trip across Bangladesh in September remains a mystery.

Mass Murders, Gang-rapes antagonizing youths

Over 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar’s violence hit Rakhine state to neighbouring Bangladesh since August when the military intensified crackdown against Rohingya Muslims.

Global humanitarian NGO Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) announced on Thursday that at least 6,700 Rohingya were killed after violence broke out in Myanmar’s Rakhine state late August.

Myanmar troops gang-raped countless Rohingya women and girls during a military campaign that sent hundreds of thousands fleeing across the border to Bangladesh, Human Rights Watch said today.

Based on interviews with rape survivors, aid organizations and Bangladeshi health officials, the report details cases of what it called mass rape where Rohingya women were rounded up and sexually assaulted by soldiers.

“Rape has been a prominent and devastating feature of the Burmese military’s campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya,” said Skye Wheeler, a researcher at Human Rights Watch and author of the report.

Of the 29 rape survivors interviewed, all but one were gang-raped by two or more perpetrators. In eight cases, women and girls reported being raped by five or more soldiers.

Women described witnessing the murders of their young children, spouses, and parents before being raped. Many rape survivors said they endured days of agony walking with swollen and torn genitals to reach Bangladesh.

Human Rights Watch documented six cases of mass rape during which soldiers gathered women in groups before beating and gang-raping them.

The report quoted 33-year-old Mamtaz Yunis as saying soldiers trapped her and about 20 other women on the side of a hill after they fled their village and raped women in front of them.